Up the Hill Backwards
by Silberias
Summary: Because with Jareth and Sarah, not everything is always as it seems.
1. Nothing As It Seems

Series of three unrelated one-shot drabble-type things. These are rather unfinished because they're just small ideas I've had kicking about in my head. Proofread by Sir-Rantsalot, and he said they were fit to be posted somewhere. I would've posted them over on tumblr but I decided against it. Samurai should be uploaded in a few days, finishing it at the moment as something rather major is happening.

Enjoy!

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><p>Sarah never stopped wishing after her experience with the Labyrinth, with Jareth—however her wishes were chosen much more carefully now, because after-all, what's said is said. Jareth could no more take her power of wishing, her power over him, than he could keep her time for more than thirteen hours. He was mysterious and fey, despite his wry insistence that he was nothing of what she saw him. Every time he appeared, he appeared as she wanted him he would tenderly explain—that was her power over him, to wrap him in the trappings of her wishes.<p>

He always took thirteen hours from her for her wishes, but those hours were never missed by anyone but herself because he would return her seemingly moments after he had taken her. He taught her to play chess, and she taught him songs from the Above. The years gently passed in this manner, Sarah with her head still trapped in dreams—according to her family, even Toby as he grew older teased her for it—and Jareth seemingly happy with their friendship.

But the Labyrinth is a place where not everything, and _everyone_, is always as it seems

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	2. Nothing Ever Hurts Again

Again, these are unrelated. One more to follow this one, and I actually like that one the best out of these three. This one, however, I like as well. It's a well-revisited idea here in the Labyrinth fandom so there's that but I feel like every author has to have such a fic at one point or another. So long as they are both aware that it's been redone to pieces and they try to do something new with it. I think I did something new here.

Enjoy!

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><p>Sarah's husband had done it to them. He and Sarah used to read to their children, a son and daughter aged two and four, from her ancient and lovingly worn copy of <em>The Labyrinth<em>, and in an argument he had used The Right Words against her as a way of degrading her sentimentality. They had been fighting a lot recently. But Sarah had never even thought that her husband might stumble across The Right Words somehow—as they weren't in the book, and she'd never spoken them since The Night.

One had to wish for The Right Words, and the goblins would give them to the wisher. Goblins did things like that, granting wishes.

_"I wish the goblins would take the three of you away. Right now."_

The familiar cackles, despite twenty years interim, interspersed with "The Lady, the Kingy's Lady!" And then the windows crashing open and in the confusion the Goblin King stood to his full, heeled height. _You cowered before me._ She knew that her time in the Labyrinth had been real, but had never spoken of it—there was no need, and Karen had already been giving her funny looks for her improved behavior after The Night. _And I was frightening_.

"Well, well, well Adam we meet once again—it would seem that _removing_…problems…is much more your style than _fixing_ them. Now—do you choose to navi—"

"No. Take them, I don't want them—I want my dreams back."

"But once upon a time Sarah was your dream I recall," there was something hard in Jareth's voice, now coming from behind her head as he laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Not this! Not two screaming kids and no money! What happened to the traveling and the expensive dinners, the big house with just us?"

Sarah's world fell down around her right then. Not only had her husband just wished her and their children away, but she had been a token exchange for someone else that Adam had wished away. She swayed but Jareth caught her by moving one arm around her waist.

"What's said is said—you took your dreams, but failed to make them come true. The fault is yours, I'm afraid. Sarah may yet come back, but that is for her to decide I think," and with that she was gone—Underground.

"Nothing will ever hurt again, sweet Sarah."

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	3. Tears for the Wintered Turn

Because the song "Glass Spider" fascinates me and I've been listening to it constantly recently I wanted to write this. I actually wrote the first two pieces while trying to write this. They are the failed-attempts but the little stories they told her essential in helping me get this particular piece written down. So that's why they're included, because I couldn't quite see this one working without having the other two in mind. Unrelated, but they get you into the mental place I was when I wrote this.

Yes.

Enjoy!

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><p>Sarah's heart was torn in two by her life as it had turned out to be. She was married with two wonderful little children, and she was free to do whatever she wanted—there was time for her hobbies, and encouragement for her endeavors. Her children were intelligent, and her husband—despite his many obligations and duties—was attentive to both them and her.<p>

But her husband was the Goblin King.

Jareth was unable to bring her to the Labyrinth for longer than thirteen hours, lest she begin to turn into a goblin. He was insistent that he was against this idea not for the fact that she would be a goblin—he had seen a future where she was one, and he assured her he was still very much in love with her as one—but that the thing that made her _Sarah_ to him would fade with the change. It was because of this great difficulty that their children were born in the Above, there was no assurance that Sarah's labor would last less than thirteen hours and Jareth felt the journey was too stressful to undertake mid-way through.

But children born in the Above, despite being the heirs of the Goblin King, were subject to the same rules as any other child born in the Above. Michael and Thomas were half…whatever Jareth was, but could never visit their father for more than half a day at a time.

They made the best of it, they had to really for there was no other option available to them. Jareth visited nightly for a few hours to tuck the boys in with bedtime stories, and to spend time with Sarah. She liked to joke that he was just like any other hardworking dad on a salaried job—absent for the most part, but not without remorse for the absence.

The boys were five when Jareth first told them the story of the glass spider. It was his way of saying goodbye to them, Sarah knew, for when the three of them aged past him and left him by the wayside. He was the glass spider, alone because of a selfish choice to have the woman he loved if only for a short time rather than endure an eternity with a substitute.

"Up until one century ago…"

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